The Jewish Women in Egypt

Vashti

Wise-Hearted Women

Woman of Valor / Eshet Chayil

Yael and Deborah

Open the Ground

The raven taught us how to open the ground and feed it what it grewBut all the while as we buried your brother I was thinking of youWhere would you wander and would you ever stayAnd could I have taught you some other way

The pain was so terrible I thought I was dying I thought I would split in twoBut a sound came from me and I opened wide and then, there was youI didn’t want to tame you I loved you as you wereIf I’d had a mother maybe I’d have learned from her

Will some woman love you in that faraway placeFor the strength in your hands and the mark on your faceSeven times seven how much is it worthFlaxseed and blood, all the fruit of the earth.

What did you say out in the field that day and how did he answer youYou always were convinced you were somehow less than him though I told you it wasn’t true

And who is counted lucky the living or the deadWhen sin is always crouching just ahead?

Eve was the first mother and had to make it up as she went along. I imagine she never stopped loving her first child even after burying her second (Genesis 4).